Champion Practice with Team Small Dog's champion pals where we learn tips more useful than ones like, rum drinks may have more calories than vodka.

Bright and early Sunday morning we went and set a course at beautiful Forest Agility for our Champion Practice. Hi, Otterpop! Wake up, Ruby!


Gustavo seemed a bit blearly all day. We went out to a Fun Match the afternoon before for a few runs after work. We haven't been doing all that much agility, and I guess we're all out of shape.


Well, maybe not Ashley. Our Champion Practices are clearly working great on him, since he was recently crowned World Champion of Agility at the big dog show in France. And then won the Grand Prix finals at USDAA Nationals the next weekend. Whew. That's Dash in the photo. He's not a World Champion yet, but hopefully our Champion practices are rubbing off on him as well.


Wendy and Zuma are on their way to Championland. Boy is Zuma fast. Like make people's eyes bug out and hold their breaths when they see her run fast. That kind of fastness


This is Mary and Ariel. Mary is held back a bit in her Championness by letting her mental management skills go all kaplooey when she thinks she is totally the worst handler out there while she's heading out the startline and then front crosses turn into rears somewhere along the line because of the mental kaplooey. She doesn't even see her Championness potential. Good thing we are practicing this.


These practices are serious, all day affairs. We work very hard and never laugh or smile or do things like hula hoop or yell at Mary. There may or may not be sugary foods and alcohol. If I said there was, I might be giving away some important secrets to managing mentalness.

So you might not be able to come to our Champion Practices, because we would go insane if we had to figure out around someone else's crazy work schedule and renting a field and who is on vacation and who has to go to AKC that day and who has to go to USDAA and who has to leave by 3pm or can't get there until noon, but you could go to Ashley's upcoming seminar series in San Francisco if you wanted.

There's a lecture with POWERPOINT! on mangaging mentalness next Saturday called "From Backyard Brilliance to Success in Competition" starring National and World Champion Ashley Deacon, then after that is a series of half day weekend handling classes designed to get handlers on a winning track for Reno. I suspect that the value of superfoods that fall into the desert tier of the food pyramid will be discussed. I am not sure what else. Because Ashley has all the good mental ideas, not me.

I would say go to Ashley's seminar, and don't read this blog anymore if you had to pick one thing that would help you be a champion. His good ideas sure have helped him, see if they help you, too!

Also, he knows how to do Powerpoint. He doesn't just scrawl in a notebook with pens. This should probably tip you off. Champions use powerpoint, not pens. I just made that up though. Ashley didn't say it. Faux champion tip disclaimer. You can ask him at the seminar what he thinks about that.

Download all of the info here, and contact Wendy at jumpnk9@live.com to register or ask questions. She provides excellent customer service! Hope you can all make it!